Because Theodore White’s Making of the President 1972 is such a compelling analysis of the conflict, in which we remain, I am using it as an outline for four consecutive columns. The first was on the general parallel between 1972 and 2020. The second was on the power of the elite media. The fourth will be on the tragic consequences of the failed ideology of the left and the human costs of bureaucratic inertia and ideological fanaticism.
This column explores what White called “the movement” and the mutation of ideas, which led to the movement and defined its ruthlessness and willingness to break all the rules.
The liberalism that had dominated the Democratic Party from President Franklin D. Roosevelt through President John F. Kennedy began to be replaced in the 1960s. As White described it, the “Liberal Idea…hardened into the Liberal Theology.”
In the 1960s, there was a swirling together of the free speech movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement, the breakdown of sexual inhibition, the rise of black power as an ideology, the gay rights movement, the anti-war movement (with a radical wing willing to bomb professors and innocent citizens) and the collapse of the idea of law and order—leading to a dramatic rise in crime and violence in virtually all of our major cities. People understood that when the U.S. Army had to be sent into Detroit to put down a riot, something had gone terribly wrong.
By 1968, Richard Nixon could campaign on “law and order” as a central theme, and it resonated with millions of Americans.
After the 1968 election, the two parties began moving in diametrically opposed directions. Southern whites, in general, and Northern blue-collar voters (often of Catholic background) were being driven toward the Republicans by the threat of a radically changed America. On the other hand, the Democrats were increasingly dominated by the demands of the left.
As White described it:
The rise of this new theology had a profound impact on the nature of politics on the left, an impact that is still there today. As White analyzed it, politics became an expression of morality. There could be no gray area or compromise—“what was morally right…must be politically sound.”
It was this spirit of ruthless imposition of the true faith that led to George McGovern and the worst Democratic defeat in modern times. The next time you listen to Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, you will hear the echo of this totalitarian belief that they are moral and their opponents are immoral—and therefore anything is justified to impose righteousness on the impure.
As the Democrats talk about reparations for slavery, and as they opine on the New York Times’ 1619 Project while defending quotas against Asian-American students with better grades, it is worth remembering White’s warning that quotas largely destroyed McGovern’s candidacy. As White put it, “The liberating idea which had inspirited the Democratic Party for so long had become a trap.”
It is likely that 2020 will become another trap for the Democrats.
The one candidate trying to be a centrist, former Vice President Joe Biden, is disintegrating into asserting “I want to be clear; I’m not going nuts.” As he collapses, the dynamic of the liberal theology and the movement will see Warren as “mainstream.”
Welcome back to 1972—almost a half-century later.
Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich is the chairman of Gingrich 360, the host of the Newt’s World podcast and author of the New York Times best-sellers Understanding Trump and Trump’s America.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
